Monthly Archives: December 2015

I just read an article over at Vox that does a pretty good job at answering the question “is Trump a Fascist?” Asking historical “experts,” mostly academics whether The Donald fits the bill they pretty much all say no, with some qualifications, of course but by the definitions supplied by these experts Trump falls short. Of course, no one should tell him this, no one wants a demagogue told he isn’t something enough.

Also at Vox, alternately hilariously, alarmingly bizzaro-worldish and freaky, Marie LePen, the leader of Front National (or National Front) the French right-wing populist party that is historically anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and generally racist disavows the proposed anti-Muslim ban Trump boisterously and famously proposed last week. Saying it “goes too far.”

Before anyone cheers LePen though it has much more to do with the fact that she’s a savvy politician who actually knows what a constitution is, rather than a multicultural softie.

If nothing else it exposes Trump for what he is, a dangerous example of charlatanism, a power hungry mogul who will say anything and stir up any amount of shit to get what he wants, even at the cost of violence against the most vulnerable. It gives one further pause in considering Trump as a serious candidate when the closest mainstream equivalent to the Nazi party stakes out a position to his left.

Okay so yes the anger is absolutely warranted these guys were assholes as far as slavery and civil rights respectively were concerned, but so were pretty much all the founding fathers, and most everyone in the country until the abolishment of said institution (or till Barack Obama was elected). Actually, oh fuck, pretty much up until recently and well shit, right freaking now!!!!

The rush to rename everything is one of the most troubling aspects of the latest round of PC nonsense. Yeah I said it, its bullshit for a number of reasons. first and foremost fucking Yale and fucking Princeton. The students at both these institutions already live so drastically differently than the rest of us that addressing that gap is much more difficult than changing a few racists names, so of course, fuck that go for the low hanging fruit baby!

The most important reason in my mind NOT to change the names of these colleges and/or buildings is that with their erasure, we forget. History has already been whitewashed time and again by people with the very purposeful intention of eliminating some fact. Whether it be a fact that a liberal or a conservative, a corporation or a government wants people to conveniently forget, and they do after a time, unless reminded.

Hell, we only recently have been nationally recalling the terrible internment of Japanese Americans during WW2 (and to a lesser extent Italians) because a formerly closeted sci-fi and social media icon starting pushing the issue. We forget the many former slaves who were collected by police in the south and charges with “vagrancy” in order to be sold into servitude in plants in the south (many of whom died as a result) when we talk about the current spate of Police on young-black-men crime.

History, even and especially the ugly parts, has relevance. I don’t care if its the Taliban, ISIS, The Klan, Black separatists or DuPont trying to re write it, the result is the same. One less example of what not to do and one more case in which doing the good thing for a small number of people and doing the RIGHT thing by history are opposed.

Keep the names and teach the fact that they were imperfect. ‘Teachable moments” indeed.

When I first heard of the tragic shootings in San Bernardino I was saddened, dismayed and angered. One thing I was not was shocked. We seem to have entered a period of violence that shows no signs of slowing down, violence in which ideology plays a huge role.

Not only religious and political ideology but the general permissiveness of violence, the ideology that says that heinous acts of violence, in all forms of culture, are permissible and in some cases encouraged. The ideologies of gun ownership and of gang violence, of police brutality and the conditions that create it. The ideology of hamstringing our boys, who already have enough on their plates by imposing new gender roles and no new ways to transition into manhood. The toxic ideology that at once encourages the sexualization of girls and young women and then tells them that their bodies are not their own. The ideology that says that everything is permissible before you even understand what everything really means.

To blame it on video games, music or even the presence of a toxic entitlement culture, any single factor, is nothing but political noise, the truth is far more complex. All of these factors colluded and combined to create a soup of confusion that we just don’t seem to be equipped to deal with.

On the topic of the latest round of violence I think we are looking for clues in all he wrong places. Our media, as usual, is catering to the lowest common denominator, going for the easy explanation where there is none and in the process only making things worse. As soon as the announcement was made that the two assailants had been “radicalized” in some way, the usual suspects started chiming in about immigration. A point which was at least half moot due to the fact that only one of the couple was not an American citizen. A point, when taken in the context of high-powered semi-automatic weapons and regular visits to the range seemed out of context with radicalization.

These people were supposed to be the “other” training overseas for jihadist terrorism, not training right under our very noses in such an “American” way. Just as most of the shooters in the multitude of mass killings in this country seemed “normal” these two seemed very normal and American. Though the family of the man who accompanied his (wife??) on the killing spree that left 14 people dead and several more wounded had no clue he had been planning anything like this, there were signs, there had to be. The problem is that they were draped as much in the trappings of being American as they were in the guise of terrorism.

Not to say that any “solution” including tightening gun restrictions or fixing some of the conditions that Americans who have been or could be radicalized, live in, will fix this, it won’t. Like many social movements this one is self propagating, as are the popular demagogues who loudly oppose it. What the demagoguery and most Americans miss has little to do with radical Islam and more to do with frustration and anger over lost glory, deceit of power and promises never kept.

Basically, everyone is angry, largely for the same reasons.

White men especially seem angrier than usual, which I find both perplexing and perfectly rational. Perplexing because, on the surface, they still have the very best deal. They have cultural hegemony, they comprise a vast swath of the middle class, the 1% and were in a much better position to ride out the financial crisis at all economic levels. They do not face the many entrenched racial biases that Black households face in housing (a major factor, as the linked article points out, being the disparity of loan offers to the same qualified borrowers) employment and education. Yes, culture is a factor, and any idiot who claims otherwise is just that, an idiot. The questions are then, how, why and what elements of “culture” contribute to the disparity, and by culture I mean perception of culture as much as any culture itself. Perfectly rational for many of the same reasons.

So minorities get doubly screwed from multiple angles, yet, somehow, White men are aggrieved?

Let me say this out front, there is an element to “Black Culture” several in fact, that I find sickening, but that isn’t the real story here because the number of elements I find repulsive in the larger American culture are legion compared to the former. After all, the abomination of misogynist and violent music, associated with Black America is repulsive and dehumanizing, but that in and of itself doesn’t cause every social ill affecting a large number of African Americans. That river runs through the whole of American culture, the focus on violence as a deterrent for violence, placing the need for information below the need for emotional resonance in our politics, blaming, lack of historical understanding and then claiming to understand history.

Some people just want to destroy. They are angry, enraged, fearful and despised and the easiest way to combat that is to appear stronger, get angrier and deafen, blocking out anything, any evidence that the world may be just as unfair to you as it is to everyone else. In the case of many White men this is a quite painful revelation when they had been insulated from this fact for so long.

To me, whether or not and when these two were radicalized is not the point, understanding why is. Why did they turn on innocent people and lash out, why did they kill? To the best of my knowledge they did not chant “god is great” while mowing down their neighbors, they did not seem, by the choosing of their targets, to be making any kind of greater statement. By many accounts there was a seething anger in them that boiled over into rage. Yes local government officials were present according to some reports, but why carry out an act of terror in a town that has no strategic value? Why when the attack was carried out, did ISIL (or ISIS or whatever the fuck) call it out immediately, take responsibility for it? Why did it take so many days for them to even acknowledge it?

They were either angry and needed an excuse to kill or they were the worst terrorists ever because judging by the delayed response, even ISIL couldn’t figure out what they were doing and why. But when you are a terrorist organization that survives on breeding hatred and distrust in the countries you despise, any means to that end is helpful.

Despite their radicalization, apparently years long planning and appearance these two were not terrorists, they were assholes who used ideology to justify a killing spree. Just because they were pushed over the edge by a “cause” one which all but guaranteed that their small daughter would grow up without parents, does not make this crime a terrorist act. It was the act of two people so angry and desperate that they needed something, anything, to justify “going postal.”

If nothing else though, they gave terror a gift in their passing. Though by any standard they do not deserve martyrdom they may have gained it. They set in motion another thoughtless, terrifyingly fascistic wave in America. As the fringe racist right has steadily gained power in Europe (again) so it seems the United States is following. He who shall not be named’s tirades notwithstanding, there is a sizable chunk of this country that is ready as well, to use ideology and empty rhetoric to incite more violence against innocent people.

I don’t care what ideology you use to justify your hatred or violence, it is still hatred and violence and should not be tolerated by a free society. A society that is becoming even more “free” for a certain few and less free for everyone else. In any case it is no excuse for violence against people just trying to live their lives in peace.